Movie examines values of the global community
By GEORGE KAGAME
February 10, 2009 3:21 PM
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Tina Petrova's new movie Animating the Golden Rule: An Introduction is a journey through the world's different religions and faiths and "understanding how the world would look like if we were truly one global community," said the filmmaker.
Animating the Golden Rule is a movie about the most famous verse in the Christian Bible New Testament from the book of Matthew 7:12 where disciples, amazed by the high moral and ethical standards set by Jesus, ask him how they can be good followers.
He answers, "So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."
This statement has since been considered by many people across the world as the golden rule and embodies all of God's law for mankind.
Petrova, a Canadian filmmaker, has gone one step further and adopted the rule as a theme for her movie, which will be screened for the first time on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 1:30 p.m. at the Scarboro Missions, 2685 Kingston Rd.
Petrova said her movie was inspired by her prior work with the Scaboro Missions where she facilitated a youth retreat program last year.
The program brought together youths ages 16 and 17 to study different religions and the golden rule. Petrova was inspired by the activities of the youth.
"My own journey - having been inspired by Mevlana Jelalludin Rumi, a 13th Century mystic and poet - and my background as a filmmaker inspired me along with Renate Simkus to make the movie," she said. "After watching the youth perform their different sets, the youth really posed very interesting themes in their acts like how it feels to be in someone else's culture and religion. Or what would the world look like if we were one global community."
She added that during the retreats, the youth dropped all ideas of separation based on religion and exchanged ideas on how the golden rule can be used to solve conflict in different religions.
"They learned a lot from the various interactions of different religions so I proposed to have a movie based on this experience," Petrova said.
The movie is important, she noted, because the youth today are consumed by a variety of multimedia such as video games, films and television so they need to learn the deep hidden meaning of symbols. "The golden rule underscores the similar values of the global community," Petrova said.
Alex Moszczynski, who likes to compose music and sing, was one of the students that took part in the retreats. He said he benefitted from participating in the skits because the movie adopted one of his original songs, "The Golden Rule Song."
He said while at the Mission Centre and waiting for the instructors, he composed a song and added tunes from his guitar which he played in the lobby of the hall.
"I never knew that this song would be of any importance and I kept it in my guitar case," he said.
But last summer, Moszczynski received a call from the movie makers and was asked to record the song.
"I am excited about this and I hope it has some impact. It is very flattering," he said.
The golden rule is considered by 13 of the world's greatest religions as the most consistent moral teaching throughout history.
Petrova has, in the past, been involved in music and filmmaking. In 2006 she released the movie Rumi-Turning Ecstatic. It tells the story of her own encounter with Rumi's spirit.
She said the two movies she has made were created to address issues that concern interfaith aspects and do not focus on a particular religious group.
Friday 13 February 2009
Toronto youth to benefit from charitable shoe drive
By GEORGE KAGAME
February 10, 2009 12:13 PM
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Street youth in Toronto are set once again to benefit from a shoe donation campaign initiated by New Balance Toronto in conjunction with Yonge Street Mission's Evergreen Centre.
The campaign, code named Trade In Trade Up shoe drive, is now in its fifth year and is aimed at helping youth in Toronto who cannot afford a new pair of shoes. They benefit from donations of gently worn shoes from well wishers.
A statement from New Balance Toronto said the need for shoes is always high.
Trade In Trade Up shoe drive will target donations from residents in the area of Bayview Village, Yonge and St. Clair and Bloor West Village and the donations will go to Yonge Street Mission's Evergreen Centre, which is dedicated to helping Toronto's large street population.
The centre offers weekly foot clinics giving youth the opportunity to exchange their old and worn out shoes for a newer pair.
Donations can be dropped off at one of the four New Balance store locations from Monday Feb. 23 until Sunday March 1, and donors will receive a $20 discount off any new pair of New Balance shoes. Organizers of the Trade In Trade Up drive said with many donations street youth are more likely to find a pair that fits properly. Running shoes are needed most, while dress shoes and industrial footwear are also needed for job interviews and employment.
In 2008 the campaign received 1,000 pairs of shoes and hopes to exceed that number this year.
February 10, 2009 12:13 PM
Print E-mail Text
Street youth in Toronto are set once again to benefit from a shoe donation campaign initiated by New Balance Toronto in conjunction with Yonge Street Mission's Evergreen Centre.
The campaign, code named Trade In Trade Up shoe drive, is now in its fifth year and is aimed at helping youth in Toronto who cannot afford a new pair of shoes. They benefit from donations of gently worn shoes from well wishers.
A statement from New Balance Toronto said the need for shoes is always high.
Trade In Trade Up shoe drive will target donations from residents in the area of Bayview Village, Yonge and St. Clair and Bloor West Village and the donations will go to Yonge Street Mission's Evergreen Centre, which is dedicated to helping Toronto's large street population.
The centre offers weekly foot clinics giving youth the opportunity to exchange their old and worn out shoes for a newer pair.
Donations can be dropped off at one of the four New Balance store locations from Monday Feb. 23 until Sunday March 1, and donors will receive a $20 discount off any new pair of New Balance shoes. Organizers of the Trade In Trade Up drive said with many donations street youth are more likely to find a pair that fits properly. Running shoes are needed most, while dress shoes and industrial footwear are also needed for job interviews and employment.
In 2008 the campaign received 1,000 pairs of shoes and hopes to exceed that number this year.
Thursday 12 February 2009
Toronto Notes 4
The train
The city has a very simplified public transport system and i will indulge myself here, i got my first travel document on 28th Feb 2008, todate that document has helped me traverse 17 countries and in all of them, i have not found honest businesses practices as there are in Canada.
The city's transport system works till 2am and whats more, you can pay for your entire travel at the beginning of the month and you are presented with a card, all ypu need is to move with you card, you swipe the plastic thing which is like a credit card-which is another story of interest and then you enter the train-whcih reaches most parts of the city, and where it doesnot reach there are buses that also allow the same card. The transport is just superb and you will be late for work or an appointment and blame it on you failure to get transport means because the trains and buses come almost every minute. Also there are maps of the city at most terminal points of the city and they are free and if you speak English, it is very helpful to ask because for all their faults Canadians will not hold back information. They will answer you back very politely whatever you ask of necessity and this a country of immigrants chances are abound that whomever you ask will have gone through what you are going through.
Toronto City is home to over five million people, if you compared it to London with 10 million or Sao Paulo with 21 million it would look like a miniature......... The city is a growing testimony about the importance of cultural diversity in the in the modern world. For any Canadian that will read this post you can appreciate that Toronto is home to a melting pot of cultures, if Canada wants to be like the US, Toronto is the closest testimony to the power of mixing different cultures in one city.
Canadians will further appreciate that Torontonians are not considered as representative if Canada because they are very diverse and mixed. It must be said here that Canadians are to a large extent a very conservative society, they are very weary of other people and the spirit of multi culturalism is being forced upon them by the influence of Toronto. The city is not a capital city of the great Canada neither is it a capital of the wealthiest province-Ontario.
However, its blend of immigrants from different regions of the world has made it the most important multicultural and economical centres in this huge country.
The Capital of Ontario and the country Ottawa remians quite conservative and largely 'white' as one writer with The Ottawa Citizen put it.
Because of its power, many people that reside in Toronto are not very popular in other cities and regions f Canada. Toronto is the only city in Canada that welcomes citizens from other parts of the world
.. The city is among the most diverse capitals in the world however currently the most dominant people both in terms of number and influence are Asians, and for all their attributes these people can not be classified as very welcoming of other races.
Even with the a huge numbers of people with Asian descent, Toronto remains the most diverse city in Canada. It is also said that Canadians from Toronto are not very popular themselves in othr parts of the country because they have the country be infiltrated by many people from other areas and so Canadians from other parts of the huge country say that most of the financial power in Toronto is in the hands of other people not Canadians.
Toronto also is home to other salient features only unique to the country, it is home to the longest street in the world-Yonge street and even the world's tallest structure as i write this resides in Toronto=The CN towers. It is because of such features that the city is rich and blessed with other cultures, to put it simply, wherever you come you will find your staple food in this city, your music and even your traditional custom.
Personally after staying here for less than a moth i have been able to meet Jimmy Cliff-the man credited with introducing reggae music to the mainstream market, i have attended a great Reggae show by Te Abyssinians-another great reggae band and this weekend i will got to watch Naught by Nature who are in town from the US.
It is worth writing more about the food in Toronto.
It has been said that may Rwandans who come to Canada bitch about the food, they say it is very sweet, others say it makes people fat as one girl-woman put it, yet others say it not fresh. This could be explained by two things, in Rwanda the food variety is limited only to irish potatoes, rice, carrots, beans, sombe. So the people there are used to a routine, when they see variety they are intimidated because they cannot figureout what to eat and in most times it is because we fail or don't know the names of the foods from other societies. In a nutshell we are a closed unit like a circle.
That said, when i arrived here i ate all the foods that were considered a taboo in my family, i ate bacon for days before i knew it was actually pork, i ate lamb before knowing it was sheep. We had been told as children that if we ate lamb out noses would be flowing with mucus non stop, i had an allergy and i was the butt of jokes because i was suspected to have eaten lamb once in my childhood one Musoga man Walumbe.
Anyhow i ate lamb and nothing happened and for bacon it actually tasted good before i asked what it was, ater these two episodes i decided to abandon food discrimination. Some people are starving and iam dismissing food just because it was available and i had choices.
There is food in all its manifestations here, all tribes, nations, religions and castes have their foods available here. wherever you come from. there will be a dish for you in Toronto and the potions are very liberal. Canada as i wrote earlier is a huge country, whatever quantity of anything you desire will be availed if you know what you want.
The city is also home to some of the best theatres in the world, there's a vibrant culture in regard to performances and shows. The Mirvin family which has a humble and rich background from a corner street home appliances shop in the 50s now owns the best theatres in Toronto where the world's best plays are staged.
There's the fabulous Canon which i was lucky to visit first in the company of John and Barbara Judd, next i visited The Princess of Wales where i watched the legendary Jimmy Cliff with Barbara Judd. The Mirvin family owns an entire street of theatres and other business related to the culture like art galleries, book stores and many more. David Mirvin the current of the family is involved every aspect of the family business and he inherited his father's acumen for investment.
Ed Mirvin affectionately known as Mr. Honest started the flagship of the family business with a simple a home and Kitchen hardware shop on Bloor street this shop evolved to an empire that is one of the most powerful in the country today. On top of the two afore mentioned theatres they also own the Panasonic and Alexandria theatres.
Theatres aside, there's a wide difference between Toronto and the other cities that i have had the chance to live in or visit, n Nairobi, Kigali, Kampala, Arusha, Entebbe and Johannesburg the wealthy class build castles and fortresses around their residences complete with a large number of guards keeping things and people away from the vicinity of their neighbourhoods. In Toronto, the richest people live downtown and stay in simple homes that are not barricaded by high rising walls. They have dogs here but the dogs are kept for company purposes not guarding ones. Canadians don't like to talk to each other much, they hate it even much more talking to strangers unless they really have to, but when it comes to dogs they are very very very caring, the dogs here and very healthy, they don;t bark or threaten to bite, there are more health centres for dogs here than bars.
Natacha is coming to pick me to go and watch great reggea band-Abysinians
write more later.
The city has a very simplified public transport system and i will indulge myself here, i got my first travel document on 28th Feb 2008, todate that document has helped me traverse 17 countries and in all of them, i have not found honest businesses practices as there are in Canada.
The city's transport system works till 2am and whats more, you can pay for your entire travel at the beginning of the month and you are presented with a card, all ypu need is to move with you card, you swipe the plastic thing which is like a credit card-which is another story of interest and then you enter the train-whcih reaches most parts of the city, and where it doesnot reach there are buses that also allow the same card. The transport is just superb and you will be late for work or an appointment and blame it on you failure to get transport means because the trains and buses come almost every minute. Also there are maps of the city at most terminal points of the city and they are free and if you speak English, it is very helpful to ask because for all their faults Canadians will not hold back information. They will answer you back very politely whatever you ask of necessity and this a country of immigrants chances are abound that whomever you ask will have gone through what you are going through.
Toronto City is home to over five million people, if you compared it to London with 10 million or Sao Paulo with 21 million it would look like a miniature......... The city is a growing testimony about the importance of cultural diversity in the in the modern world. For any Canadian that will read this post you can appreciate that Toronto is home to a melting pot of cultures, if Canada wants to be like the US, Toronto is the closest testimony to the power of mixing different cultures in one city.
Canadians will further appreciate that Torontonians are not considered as representative if Canada because they are very diverse and mixed. It must be said here that Canadians are to a large extent a very conservative society, they are very weary of other people and the spirit of multi culturalism is being forced upon them by the influence of Toronto. The city is not a capital city of the great Canada neither is it a capital of the wealthiest province-Ontario.
However, its blend of immigrants from different regions of the world has made it the most important multicultural and economical centres in this huge country.
The Capital of Ontario and the country Ottawa remians quite conservative and largely 'white' as one writer with The Ottawa Citizen put it.
Because of its power, many people that reside in Toronto are not very popular in other cities and regions f Canada. Toronto is the only city in Canada that welcomes citizens from other parts of the world
.. The city is among the most diverse capitals in the world however currently the most dominant people both in terms of number and influence are Asians, and for all their attributes these people can not be classified as very welcoming of other races.
Even with the a huge numbers of people with Asian descent, Toronto remains the most diverse city in Canada. It is also said that Canadians from Toronto are not very popular themselves in othr parts of the country because they have the country be infiltrated by many people from other areas and so Canadians from other parts of the huge country say that most of the financial power in Toronto is in the hands of other people not Canadians.
Toronto also is home to other salient features only unique to the country, it is home to the longest street in the world-Yonge street and even the world's tallest structure as i write this resides in Toronto=The CN towers. It is because of such features that the city is rich and blessed with other cultures, to put it simply, wherever you come you will find your staple food in this city, your music and even your traditional custom.
Personally after staying here for less than a moth i have been able to meet Jimmy Cliff-the man credited with introducing reggae music to the mainstream market, i have attended a great Reggae show by Te Abyssinians-another great reggae band and this weekend i will got to watch Naught by Nature who are in town from the US.
It is worth writing more about the food in Toronto.
It has been said that may Rwandans who come to Canada bitch about the food, they say it is very sweet, others say it makes people fat as one girl-woman put it, yet others say it not fresh. This could be explained by two things, in Rwanda the food variety is limited only to irish potatoes, rice, carrots, beans, sombe. So the people there are used to a routine, when they see variety they are intimidated because they cannot figureout what to eat and in most times it is because we fail or don't know the names of the foods from other societies. In a nutshell we are a closed unit like a circle.
That said, when i arrived here i ate all the foods that were considered a taboo in my family, i ate bacon for days before i knew it was actually pork, i ate lamb before knowing it was sheep. We had been told as children that if we ate lamb out noses would be flowing with mucus non stop, i had an allergy and i was the butt of jokes because i was suspected to have eaten lamb once in my childhood one Musoga man Walumbe.
Anyhow i ate lamb and nothing happened and for bacon it actually tasted good before i asked what it was, ater these two episodes i decided to abandon food discrimination. Some people are starving and iam dismissing food just because it was available and i had choices.
There is food in all its manifestations here, all tribes, nations, religions and castes have their foods available here. wherever you come from. there will be a dish for you in Toronto and the potions are very liberal. Canada as i wrote earlier is a huge country, whatever quantity of anything you desire will be availed if you know what you want.
The city is also home to some of the best theatres in the world, there's a vibrant culture in regard to performances and shows. The Mirvin family which has a humble and rich background from a corner street home appliances shop in the 50s now owns the best theatres in Toronto where the world's best plays are staged.
There's the fabulous Canon which i was lucky to visit first in the company of John and Barbara Judd, next i visited The Princess of Wales where i watched the legendary Jimmy Cliff with Barbara Judd. The Mirvin family owns an entire street of theatres and other business related to the culture like art galleries, book stores and many more. David Mirvin the current of the family is involved every aspect of the family business and he inherited his father's acumen for investment.
Ed Mirvin affectionately known as Mr. Honest started the flagship of the family business with a simple a home and Kitchen hardware shop on Bloor street this shop evolved to an empire that is one of the most powerful in the country today. On top of the two afore mentioned theatres they also own the Panasonic and Alexandria theatres.
Theatres aside, there's a wide difference between Toronto and the other cities that i have had the chance to live in or visit, n Nairobi, Kigali, Kampala, Arusha, Entebbe and Johannesburg the wealthy class build castles and fortresses around their residences complete with a large number of guards keeping things and people away from the vicinity of their neighbourhoods. In Toronto, the richest people live downtown and stay in simple homes that are not barricaded by high rising walls. They have dogs here but the dogs are kept for company purposes not guarding ones. Canadians don't like to talk to each other much, they hate it even much more talking to strangers unless they really have to, but when it comes to dogs they are very very very caring, the dogs here and very healthy, they don;t bark or threaten to bite, there are more health centres for dogs here than bars.
Natacha is coming to pick me to go and watch great reggea band-Abysinians
write more later.
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Toronto Notes 3
Canada is te second biggest country in the world and by some estimates one with the greatest concentration of natural resources, when you hear opinion leaders discuss American hunger for oil-and therefore their continued interest and interference in the Middle East and Arabia allegedly for oil-you would consider that the us gets most of its oil from those regions, yet the truth is that the US gets most of its oil from Canada. Canada is extremely rich but it is also extremely conservative, with its huge size and resources it has only one 32 million citizens. Explanations vary, the most prominent being the weather, i can't tell what the truth. But for a fact there's a dynamic mix of people in this country from all parts of the world, why the population has not grown to the level of the US or Mexico nearby is the stuff of thick minded people.
There's relatively small number of black of people in Toronto which is by far is the most diverse city in North America-some would say New York.
This black group of people here are called 'visibly Minority' and there are several programmes by government to help them along with the 'First Nation' groups to access social amenities, these include helping them access education, health and other services. There are actually very Canadian born black people according to a former student of the University of Toronto, my of the blacks here are instead from the Caribeans. I made the naive mistake of referring to one such black person as a fellow African, and i got a lesson about the importance of making politically correct statements or identities in this country.
Apparently, Caribeans are very very sensitive to being referred to as Africans. Africa is a place of corruption, poverty and sleazy government officials and no one wants to be identified with them, it is also thought that the Africans that end up in Canada are ones with clout and connections in their countries and so they are part of that corruption.
The Caribeans also have a totally different type of skins relative to the ones we have here, we are black yes but like Europeans near the Meditarean sea and those in the Northern pole, our skin texture is quite different. They also dress very different, their baggy jeans are tied so low that when you look at a male you cannot help thinking that if there's a slight change in his pace of walking the thing will fall off his butt.
There's a whole variety of people in Toronto and there's no better place to observe the different cultural mix other than Downtown Toronto near Queen and King streets. The fashion glitz here would make missionary school managers in Africa faint in shock, the lifestyles are also equally worth noting. Dance clubs-most are the old town Kareoke that we have at the famous Sky Hotel-ony that here they singing, miming and dancing is done by old women-i was told they could actually be men with long pure white hair and even longer boots on their feet.
Couples-sometimes of the same sex are freely kissing away everywhere and on some occasions screaming and groaning from sex orgies taking place around the corner. Sex here is a celebration, it is not a taboo, you can have it just anywhere without any limit-it is indeed very stupefying why, in Africa with all our sacred approach to sex we are the ones dying the most with HIV/Aids and girls dropping out of school because of early pregnancies. Again, thats the stuff of thick minds.
But it is understandable also why you can do anything in Toronto and get away with it, even if people here actually gaze at strangers the way we do in Africa, they are also busy listening to music. Everyone in this city seems to have earphones plugged in their ears purportedly listening. The most part it is pretentious so that they don't seem to be purposely to be staring at you if you appear a stranger but then again it is difficult to appear a strange here. All the same, w shall be hideously staring at each other in the bus but pretending to be listening to music.
Also because on an average day their are many strange things and strange people in a public place like the trains-this is another interesting topic-people will do anything to avoid eye contact, there's a serious reading culture here that if you are a journalist you most definitely have to research about your story before writing it because the audience is quite informed.
In the subway, which is the equivalent of a Twegerane but a more advanced one at that will have most passengers reading something from freely supplied newspapers-which rely on advertisements to novels, magazines, bibles, journals. Even children read here. As a journalist i always felt proud seeing people emersed in a newspaper reading or filling a crossword puzzle.
But foe the most part they are doing this to avoid eye contact, people are shy here which is confusing because when you talk to them, they have a natural flow of confidence.
With such a large country as Canada, it is confusing how everyone tries to be very protective of their personal space and trying to have their own space even on a train which is almost the main place where you can find many people at the same place.
There's relatively small number of black of people in Toronto which is by far is the most diverse city in North America-some would say New York.
This black group of people here are called 'visibly Minority' and there are several programmes by government to help them along with the 'First Nation' groups to access social amenities, these include helping them access education, health and other services. There are actually very Canadian born black people according to a former student of the University of Toronto, my of the blacks here are instead from the Caribeans. I made the naive mistake of referring to one such black person as a fellow African, and i got a lesson about the importance of making politically correct statements or identities in this country.
Apparently, Caribeans are very very sensitive to being referred to as Africans. Africa is a place of corruption, poverty and sleazy government officials and no one wants to be identified with them, it is also thought that the Africans that end up in Canada are ones with clout and connections in their countries and so they are part of that corruption.
The Caribeans also have a totally different type of skins relative to the ones we have here, we are black yes but like Europeans near the Meditarean sea and those in the Northern pole, our skin texture is quite different. They also dress very different, their baggy jeans are tied so low that when you look at a male you cannot help thinking that if there's a slight change in his pace of walking the thing will fall off his butt.
There's a whole variety of people in Toronto and there's no better place to observe the different cultural mix other than Downtown Toronto near Queen and King streets. The fashion glitz here would make missionary school managers in Africa faint in shock, the lifestyles are also equally worth noting. Dance clubs-most are the old town Kareoke that we have at the famous Sky Hotel-ony that here they singing, miming and dancing is done by old women-i was told they could actually be men with long pure white hair and even longer boots on their feet.
Couples-sometimes of the same sex are freely kissing away everywhere and on some occasions screaming and groaning from sex orgies taking place around the corner. Sex here is a celebration, it is not a taboo, you can have it just anywhere without any limit-it is indeed very stupefying why, in Africa with all our sacred approach to sex we are the ones dying the most with HIV/Aids and girls dropping out of school because of early pregnancies. Again, thats the stuff of thick minds.
But it is understandable also why you can do anything in Toronto and get away with it, even if people here actually gaze at strangers the way we do in Africa, they are also busy listening to music. Everyone in this city seems to have earphones plugged in their ears purportedly listening. The most part it is pretentious so that they don't seem to be purposely to be staring at you if you appear a stranger but then again it is difficult to appear a strange here. All the same, w shall be hideously staring at each other in the bus but pretending to be listening to music.
Also because on an average day their are many strange things and strange people in a public place like the trains-this is another interesting topic-people will do anything to avoid eye contact, there's a serious reading culture here that if you are a journalist you most definitely have to research about your story before writing it because the audience is quite informed.
In the subway, which is the equivalent of a Twegerane but a more advanced one at that will have most passengers reading something from freely supplied newspapers-which rely on advertisements to novels, magazines, bibles, journals. Even children read here. As a journalist i always felt proud seeing people emersed in a newspaper reading or filling a crossword puzzle.
But foe the most part they are doing this to avoid eye contact, people are shy here which is confusing because when you talk to them, they have a natural flow of confidence.
With such a large country as Canada, it is confusing how everyone tries to be very protective of their personal space and trying to have their own space even on a train which is almost the main place where you can find many people at the same place.
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